'What the hell happened here?' Hunter said.
6
The scale of the Halls of the Drakusa spoke of grandeur. Ceilings soared cathedral-like overhead and huge chambers that could have accommodated a small army rang with their hesitant footsteps. Church led his group past pillars of marble and extensive murals that must once have gleamed with colour, but were now faded and barely visible, the most obvious symbol of the decay and great age that shrouded the Halls. A desert of white dust interspersed with piles of shattered masonry and discarded everyday objects covered the stone flags. Only darkness and shadows remained in a place that had once thronged with life.
Shavi examined some of the murals as they passed. 'Who were the Drakusa?' he asked.
'Every race has the arrogance to believe they were the first and best,' Tom said, joining him. 'The old stories hint at others who came before. Races that rose up, established civilisations and were then wiped clean and forgotten, through their own hubris or at the whims of angry gods.'
'You don't really think that could happen to us?' Ruth said. 'With all our technology, our learning-'
'You think these people didn't have their own technology, different from ours, maybe more powerful, their own wisdom?' Intrigued, Tom brushed away some of the dust and cobwebs that obscured the mural.
Shavi saw what Tom was seeing, and joined him. From beneath the grime of ages, faint images emerged of oval shapes, giant in scale compared to the human figures prostrate before them. Some of the egg shapes appeared to be spouting tentacles, or were in the process of becoming something else.
'Those,' Shavi said, puzzled, 'are Caraprix.'
His expression troubled, Tom studied the mural.
'Never seen any that big,' Laura said.
'It's symbolic,' Tom muttered.
'So the Drakusa knew of the Caraprix, long before the Tuatha De Danaan.' Raising the lantern, Church looked around the walls in a new light. Images of Caraprix were visible everywhere, on the walls behind the dust, in mosaics on the floor and carvings on the marble pillars, emerging in part here and there, barely recognisable in isolation but taken together presenting a temple to the shape-shifting creatures. 'This place implies that they're gods or something.'
'Whoever did all these pictures… why are they making such a big deal out of them?' Veitch asked. 'The Caraprix are just pets, right? Those golden-skinned bastards have them around for entertainment.'
'I think we have been a little blind and stupid,' Tom began. 'All the time the Caraprix have been before our eyes, and we have misjudged them. We have not seen their true nature.'
A flicker of Blue Fire sizzled randomly at the tip of Ruth's spear and they all jumped. 'What do you mean?' Ruth asked.
'We have been told many, many times that the closer things are to the heart of Existence, the more fluid they are,' Tom replied. 'And these are the most fluid things of all. They have no fixed shape, no definable purpose. They can be anything they want. What, I wonder, are the limits of that? What could they really be?'
Church indicated another image, a figure with arms outstretched, strings connecting his fingers to a row of dancing marionettes. 'The Puppeteer,' he said. 'I've seen him before. In Venice, back in Elizabethan times. And in the court. So he existed before the current Age, before the Tuatha De Danaan? Why would he be painted here?'
'It's not that I don't find your noodling and navel-gazing so, so fascinating, ' Laura snapped, 'but what say we forget all this and move on before those Fomorii find a way in here and hunt us down like rabbits.'
'She's right,' Veitch said. 'This isn't important. We need to find the gate to Summer-side, and this place is so big we could be searching for years.'
Tom glared at Veitch, about to launch an angry comment, when Church dropped a hand on his shoulder. 'This isn't the place for a fight.' He nodded towards Miller and Virginia, who were sitting together on a piece of fallen pillar. Miller had a reassuring arm around the frightened girl's shoulders, but his fixed expression revealed his own repressed terror. 'We forget they're not like us,' Church continued. 'They've not seen the things we've seen, and they're not built to deal with what they've found here.'
'They're not like you,' Tom said pointedly.
Their unease mounted as they continued through the empty, ringing halls. The scale of the place, the silence, the darkness, the decay combined to create a thick, oppressive atmosphere that was profoundly unsettling. Though none of them gave voice to it, they all felt as if they were being watched by hateful eyes from the shadows just beyond the extent of the thin lantern light.
The stillness was so intense that even the slightest sound was magnified, and all their senses were heightened. After an hour, they heard a short, dull grind that could have been a door opening. It was so faint and distant that they would have dismissed it at any other time, but in that place it sounded like a tolling bell.
'I don't think we're alone in here,' Church said.
'They're coming.'
They all turned to look at Virginia, who had thrown off her hood and was smiling. It added a macabre cast to the desperate terror glittering in her eyes.
'The Fomorii?' Church asked.
Virginia shook her head. 'Worse than that.'
7
Claustrophobic darkness, and hard stone all around. The ragged heat of his breath. Pain, fading quickly, flashes of images in his memory so terrifying that his consciousness recoiled at their touch. Thankfully, the images subsided as Mallory came round.
He choked back bile at the abiding recollection of the touch of hard steel at his throat, the sensation of what followed and the scream of his mind as it wound down into darkness, and knew that it would haunt him for as long as he lived.
But he was alive. The ritual had worked. Everything was subsumed beneath the rush of wonder and relief, and he began frantically to feel around his environment. He was in a stone box, as Veitch had told him to expect.
Pressing his hands against the lid, he lifted. The lid ground to one side and flickering torchlight added another level of relief. Dank air rushed into the dry, dusty interior of the box.
Once he had clambered out, he found another stone box on a plinth next to him. Scuffling sounds came from within. He eased the lid off and helped Caitlin out. She clutched the Wayfinder to her chest, the blue flame providing welcome relief in that gloomy place.
'Look after me,' Caitlin said in the fragile voice of her Amy personality.
Mallory hugged her to him. 'Course I will.'
He held her until she released herself. 'It's okay — she's gone back to Brigid and Briony now.' She forced a wan smile, her eyes dark and limpid.
'The Morrigan?'
'Is waiting.' She stared into his eyes for a moment longer, and her gaze was briefly filled with all the powerful emotions she kept repressed. She broke off when she realised what she was revealing, although she knew he understood. 'Come on — we've got a job to do.'
When she held the lantern aloft, it revealed a huge chamber built from cyclopean stone blocks beyond the ability of any human to carve or move. Wall paintings also beyond human scale soared up into the shadows, incomprehensible and troubling, and here and there were effigies of squat, misshapen figures or tall, spindly beings. Not human.
'A temple,' Mallory said.
'Here? What do the dead worship?'
Mallory couldn't answer.
With a shudder, Caitlin turned her attention to the lamp's flame, which was bending unnaturally to point away from them. 'So Hal's in there somewhere? How do we talk to him?'
'If we call on him, he'll come,' Mallory said. 'But we've got to protect that lamp with our lives. Hal can die here, though die might not be the right word.'
'He'll be fine. We just put our heads down, follow the flame and we'll be at the Market in no time.'
'I like your optimism.'
As they searched for an exit, they found an area where a foot-high egg of swirling sapphire and emerald stood on a waist-high stone
column. Every instinct told them to move on, but it drew them in nonetheless.
'What is that?' Caitlin said. 'It feels electric. Is it pulsing?'
Mesmerised, they stepped onto the dais surrounding the column; when they got within three feet of the egg they passed through some invisible boundary where everything became green-tinged and all sounds from the chamber beyond were muffled.
Cautiously, Caitlin reached out towards the egg, every warning instinct suppressed. When her fingers came within an inch of its surface, there was a shimmer and they found themselves standing in a three-dimensional view of a dark hall where Church and the others stood around Virginia.
'It's some kind of viewing thing, like the Wish-Post in the Great Courts,' Mallory said. He paused. 'Where's Hunter and Jack?'
The scene shifted to reveal the cavern of bones. 'Now why are they not with the others?' Caitlin asked.
The scene shifted again, this time unprompted. Mallory looking younger, happier, standing in Salisbury Cathedral. Caitlin standing in the rain, crying, covered in clay. Stonehenge in the morning sun, Blue Fire flickering above each trilithon. Church on his knees before the Libertarian, covered in blood. Someone reading a book, looking directly at Mallory and Caitlin.
A bolt of pain struck Mallory between the eyes, and instead of looking into the egg, something was looking out at him. He had the overwhelming sensation of a crushing consciousness focusing the full extent of its power upon him. It sizzled into his brain, crawling into his thoughts, turning over every aspect of who he was and what he wanted. Flames flickered around his perception and the image of the Burning Man began to fall into relief around them.
Caitlin grabbed Mallory and propelled him out of the active zone around the egg. He cried out as the consciousness was painfully torn from his mind. 'The Void,' he gasped. 'It was looking into me. It recognised me.' He sucked in a breath of air. 'It knows who all of us are, every human. It knows our strengths, and our weaknesses. Our desires.'
'I think we make a vow not to touch anything else in this world,' Caitlin said, helping Mallory to his feet. 'Nothing good's going to come out of anything here.'
As Mallory recovered, they heard a noise coming from the direction of the two Rebirth Boxes. Creeping back to the chamber, they saw an arm of twisted blackthorn rise from one of the boxes, and then another. The Hortha rose up and turned its crumpled-paper face towards them.
In that briefest contact, Mallory had a premonition of his own death. Chilled, he guided Caitlin quickly away. While the Hortha adjusted to the transition to the Grim Lands, they moved quickly through the dark chambers until they found the exit tunnel that Veitch had described. It led out into a fissure in the rock in which the temple had been carved. Overhead, a slate-grey sky was occasionally revealed by gaps in the constantly drifting mist. Black shapes moved across it; birds, they guessed, although the perspective suggested something much larger. Every sound was dampened, the rattle of a kicked stone so muffled it could barely be heard six feet away.
They scrambled up a scree-slope onto a bleak, featureless terrain of hard rock and shale, though the mist made it impossible to see too far ahead. Although there was no breeze, the mist continued to fold and twist, licking at them, enswathing them until they moved on rapidly to leave it behind.
'Nice place,' Mallory said. 'Reminds me of a day I spent in Harlow.'
'I guess the dead don't need much in the way of scenery.'
The timbre of Caitlin's voice had changed subtly. Most people wouldn't have noticed, but Mallory was always struck by the slight physical alterations that came over her when one of her personalities took over. This one he recognised as the Morrigan, not in full control, but far back in her head, slackly taking the reins.
'We got out of that temple just in time,' he said. 'We're not leaving a trail here. That should make it difficult for the Hortha to follow us.'
'No trail you can see,' Caitlin corrected.
'You're not going to let me hide away in my all-is-right-with-the-world fantasies, are you?'
'That won't benefit us. We need to be aware, to keep moving. If that thing crossed the barrier into the Grim Lands, it's not going to give up easily.'
'The worst thing about that lantern is that it gives no indication of distance. What happens if we've got to follow that flame for thousands of miles?'
'I'm not sure distance or time mean much here. It just… is…'
Caitlin's voice dried up as the first feature emerged from the mist: a pair of iron gates in a Victorian style, one of them hanging askew from a broken hinge. They were supported by two stone columns on which black gargoyles perched. In the centre of the wrought-iron arch above the gate was a skull resting on crossed bones. On either side, rusted iron railings stretched out until they were lost in the shifting mist. Beyond sprawled a graveyard: markers, mausoleums, tombs, statues of weeping angels, some of them sagging at angles or broken, suggesting great age. The lichen-covered stone glowed spectrally in the strange, diffuse light. Ivy grew up some of the monuments, obscuring their meaning, and long, yellowing grass grew amongst the graves, along with wild flowers that were splashes of queasy colour in the grey.
Apprehensively, Mallory and Caitlin halted at the gate, but the Wayfinder continued to point directly ahead.
'You're just asking for trouble going through a place like that in a place like this,' Mallory said.
Caitlin followed the line of the railings into the mist. 'I have a horrible feeling this graveyard goes on a long, long way. I don't think we'll be able to go around it.'
Mallory sighed. 'Yep. Makes perfect sense.'
Standing before the gate, he glanced up at the arch and briefly thought he saw his own face on the skull. The illusion passed quickly and he took hold of the sagging gate, which emitted a protesting, resonant scream from its rusted, long-unused hinges. It was the only sound that carried any distance, and seemed to go on and on and on into the mist.
'I'm living in a really bad horror movie,' he said, his palms unbearably sweaty. If the Hortha was on the move, it would have heard that metallic wrenching.
Once again they came to a halt, on the threshold. Every sense told them not to enter the graveyard, but the Wayfinder continued to urge them on.
'Come on — don't be scared!'
The voice startled them. Mallory exchanged a glance with Caitlin and then drew his sword. The Blue Fire around the blade was barely evident. Caitlin reached behind and removed her axe from its harness.
'What fine weapons! What a sword! What an axe! But that sword… yes! One of the Three Great Swords of Existence, if I am not mistaken. And I am rarely mistaken, unless I am in my cups, which, admittedly, has not been much of an option in recent times.'
The deeply theatrical voice hid any true emotion. Mallory had an impression of some old stage ham, living on past glories. 'Who's there?' he called.
'A friend. Nothing more.'
'Somehow I doubt that.'
As Mallory and Caitlin crossed the threshold, they felt a sudden tingle of uneasiness as if the barrier had been real and not just imaginary. Whoever was there was hidden amongst the clutter of mausoleums and grave markers.
'Don't worry! I won't bite! Indeed, I am utterly desperate for invigorating human conversation. Why, we are social beings. We are not meant for this dreary, unstimulating place — where, I might add, I should not be. But enough about that travesty for now, lest I find myself carried away on a wave of bitterness, which will only wash me up on the bleak shores of despair.'
Mallory pushed through the long grass, searching all around. The mist hid objects, then revealed them, then hid them again, so they quickly lost all sense of direction. They could no longer see the gate, although they had not gone far.
'But as the great Shelley said,' the speaker continued, ' "Some say that gleams of a remoter world visit the soul in sleep — that death is slumber." So perhaps I… perhaps all of us happy breed… are only sleeping.'
As Mallory and Caitlin rounde
d an ivy-clustered mausoleum they finally found the speaker, sitting cross-legged on a tomb. He was a strange figure. Though in his mid-forties, he had long, silver hair and a gaunt face. He wore a black suit, shiny from wear, offset by a flamboyant red brocade waistcoat. His boots were worn and holed on the soles.
'What are you doing here?' Caitlin asked.
'Just resting my old bones.' He chuckled, revealing a gap between nicotine-stained teeth.
'Who are you?' Mallory asked.
'Who am I? The great existential question. Who. Am. I. There are many possible answers-'
'Who are you?' Mallory repeated fiercely.
'I am the bard of the hedgerows, the king of the open road, alley sloper, gourmand and wit.' He held his arms wide. 'My name is Callow.'
Chapter Four
Death At The Groghaan Gate
1
The Halls of the Drakusa were endless, and silent. The tip of the Spear of Lugh burning with Blue Fire to light her path, Ruth led the way through chamber after chamber where the shadows pressed hard against them and the oppressive sense of threat grew by the moment. More energy burned at the rear of the column where Church and Veitch had their swords drawn to defend the group from any attack.
'This place is a bleedin' maze,' Veitch hissed. 'We could be going round and round in circles.'
'Shavi seems to have his bearings, or at least his eye does.' Church paused to listen intently as he had done so many times since Virginia had warned them that they were being pursued.
'Anything?' Veitch asked.
Church shook his head.
'Maybe she was just spooked by the dark. She's only a kid.'
'The noise-'
'Echoes. Stones.' He wasn't even convincing himself. 'Let's close the door on this room. Barricade it. If there is anything behind us, it might slow them down.'
Church agreed, and they called on Ruth to stop the column while they ran the length of the huge chamber. The doors closed easily and quietly, and there was a heavy oaken bar to lock them in place. Then they dragged numerous chunks of shattered masonry against the doors to add to the barricade.
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